A Lesson from France

“The French government said it would give 6.5 billion euros ($8.4 billion) in low interest loans to Renault SA and PSA Peugeot-Citroen in exchange for pledges that the car makers won’t close any factories or lay off any workers in France for the duration of the funding.” Wall Street Journal 2-10-09

Quel surpris! The French government bailout of France’s auto industry requires the auto companies to continue the employment of the company’s workers! In the US, on the other hand, the government urges the auto industry to “restructure” before receiving bailout funds, principally by laying off workers.

Are US auto workers any less deserving of this pledge? Does government owe them any less, in a time of global economic crisis?

But then nobody asked…

In the US, representatives of the auto workers join the CEO’s in begging for corporate bailout money while conceding that everyone must make sacrifices. It is a foregone conclusion that tens of thousands of workers will lose their jobs for the sake of “restructuring”.

France’s commitment to its auto workers certainly does not spring from any compassion on the part of its government. French President Sarkozy has dedicated his term to breaking the back of France’s unions. He is widely viewed as a French George Bush, seeking to wipeout the social gains of years of struggle in the interest of a harsh competitive regimen.

But the French working class has pushed back with militant, united street actions and strikes. They have joined students, immigrants, retirees, and professionals in resisting. Long derided by arrogant tourists for its labor militancy, France has - ironically - faired better economically than its European counterparts in the face of the world crisis.

There are lessons here. Is anyone listening?

Zoltan Zigedy

Two and a Half Trillion for the Capitalist Economy, ???? for the People’s Economy

Tuesday’s announcement of the Obama economic team’s plans to rescue the financial industry was met by indifference or hostility from the “masters of the universe” on Wall Street. Meanwhile, the stimulus plan – meant to address the decline of production and employment in the real economy – stumbled through the legislative chambers, picked apart by the partisans of greed and aloofness and leaving little but crumbs for a population starved for jobs and an assured future.

Those expecting a miraculous turn around – and they were many, mesmerized by the energy of the Obama transition – were brought back to earth. There is still a monstrous economic catastrophe – some now are saying worse than The Great Depression. There is still an uneven class struggle with one side fighting a desperate slash and burn campaign and the other side frozen with trust and patience. And there is still a poverty of boldness, fresh thinking, and a commitment to social justice.

Could it be otherwise?

Trapped into a box of conventional thinking, the economic policy team around Obama understands that they cannot simply assume the huge pile of garbage accumulated by an irresponsible financial sector without encouraging a return of the behavior that heaped this unknown and undesired mass of unredeemable debt upon the economy. They recognize that socializing this financial excrement would be politically suicidal. But nothing short of cleaning up the financial backyard will please the lords of capitalism.

Thus, Volker, Summers, Geithner et al – stumble along, offering Hoover-esque statements of confidence and pumping new resources into the tired policies of the Bush administration. Change? Where?

Yet lurking in the shadows is a fresh, but unspeakable solution: Nationalize the Banks! Already the capitalization of former financial giants like Bank of America and Citigroup amounts to around half of the public funds thrown at the feet of their discredited, but shameless managers. How much more must we give them? Sanity cries out for, at least, a discussion of this option.

If the labor movement will not speak and press this option, who will? If the left and progressive movement will not come together around this solution, who will?

Time is running short.

Zoltan Zigedy

A Hollow Debate

It is almost unimaginable, but less than six months ago there were few discussions of the “big” issues facing the world economy. Today, facing an economic disaster, the media-noise on the economy is almost unbearable. “Experts” spew theories from every print and electronic faucet, with most of it polluted with bad economics and inflexible thinking. One can draw an easy line between two schools that now look back upon The Great Depression and draw two contrary, intellectually lazy, and wrong headed conclusions. On one side are Republicans and some Democrats who maintain that Roosevelt’s New Deal worsened the 1929 collapse, an illness that would have cured itself with just a bit of monetary tinkering. These hard-core adherents to laissez faire capitalism stretch credulity with their semi-religious faith in economic orthodoxy.

Arrayed against them are other Democrats and allied soft-left progressives who worshipfully proclaim the New Deal as the savior of capitalism and the harbinger of a humane economy. This group finds a blue print for economic recovery in the myriad acts, agencies, and programs associated with the Roosevelt tenure.

To the extent that these two options exhaust all but a tiny segment of the public discussion, we are enslaved by a field of battle chosen by the partisans of our two ossified political parties. To the extent that these views are merely two branches of the same theoretical tree, we are starved for fresh, daring solutions. As the debate goes along, both sides are discredited by one fact, conceded by all credible, serious students of The Great Depression: A vigorous recovery only came with the military build-up preceding and continuing through the Second World War.

Why is it so hard for our experts to face this fact squarely?

Accepting this conclusion calls into question the shared fundamental beliefs of all those wedded to a purely capitalist solution. The Second World War economy challenged private employment, market-driven production and distribution, hyper-consumerism, waste, private research and development, and a host of other sacred tenets of the for-profit economy. Unfortunately, huge profits remained a feature of the war-time economy. Millions of US citizens were organized into government employment (military service), millions more were drawn into a centrally planned economy driven by government production goals free from market forces. Consumption was substantially leveled. This economy raised the living standards of the vast majority of the poor and destitute while creating a collective consciousness and a spirit of common sacrifice. The world viewed this great economic engine as the arsenal of democracy with huge government funded and selflessly motivated advances in technology, engineering, and creative thought. Unfortunately, this was all directed to death and destruction; capitalism only turned to these quasi-socialist measures in a moment of desperation. Yet no respectable public figure would dare concede these truths.

Perhaps even more embarrassing to those entrusted with rescuing the economy, the recovery from The Great Depression only came with a cataclysm of unmatched suffering and brutality. Unwilling to unleash this powerful, rational economic organization for peaceful purposes, the ruling class readily retained the war economy as a regular feature of the capitalist economy from the Cold War until today. Over the years, the socially advanced aspects of the World War II economic engine have been corrupted and “profitized” beyond recognition. Today, the huge military economy stands as a cesspool of waste, cronyism, and excessive profits and a bulwark of US imperial design on the rest of the world.

As we face a frightening world crisis of capitalism, we must begin to recognize the enormous human cost of our surrender to the self-proclaimed “masters of the universe” occupying the boardrooms of the corporate world. The class pillage of the people’s wealth by these arrogant, privileged lords engineered by their political minions under the guise of “rescue” goes beyond shame. As with the soon to be instituted stimulus plan, the financial bail-out was a product of rigid, dogmatic thinking, policies hatched by those who could never imagine a course of action that put the people’s interest ahead of profits and the fate of the “masters”. In only a few short months, a policy hailed as necessary and universally beneficial by most of our political and intellectual leadership has been exposed as an unparalleled give-away to arrogant white guys in business suits who smugly scorn those “beneath” their elevated status. Many of the same politicians who hastily shoveled a trillion dollars at the feet of the “masters of the universe” just as hastily strangled welfare, universal health care, affirmative action, veterans benefits, public education and other so-called “entitlements”. The very word, “entitlement”, reflects an Orwellian view of our class society - the lofty deserve and need support, the rest of us must establish our claims.

While there are rumblings of discontent and anger, most of the US remains captive to the world-view shared by the governing elite. We are trapped into a narrow view of the crisis that depicts the explosive growth of the financial sector and its subsequent implosion as a real phenomena and not an other-worldly fantasy football game with virtual wealth and virtual profits. We speak misleadingly of all of the wealth and profits created and lost by the Gordon Gekko’s of our time. Instead, we should look at the Clinton/Bush years as a delusional, fantasy deviation from the flat trajectory of a struggling, wounded capitalism limping through the post-Vietnam War years with stagnant incomes and wealth, unemployment and a tattered social net. The economic crisis is a return to that trajectory, with the economy shorn of the fictitious value and profit of the now tarnished golden era of “free” market euphoria. The fact is that the entire financial structure was built upon blurring the lines between real assets and accumulated debt, where debt is merely some kind of promissory note against future income or assets. As debt – counted as an asset – circulated faster and wider in the world economy, as the promissory costs and conditions loosened and loosened, as income and profit projections supported greater and greater debt acquisition, the future redemption of debt grew dimmer and dimmer. Bourgeois economists metaphorically call these events “bubbles”, though the metaphor hides the fictitious substance of such behavior. Some warned that debt acquisition could not go on interminably, yet history gave no answer to where those limits were. Like most fantasy games, the financial game might have continued forever if the game were never disturbed by unwelcome, unexpected intrusions – in this case, a decline in housing values. Imagine the even more obscene disparities of wealth generated if all the assumed debt were remitted.

As the fictitious value disappears, the giants of the financial sector are revealed as complicit in disguised Ponzi schemes. Daily reports of new Ponzi schemes - The Wall Street Journal (1-28-09) reports at least seven exposed in January – demonstrate that the difference between what the media calls a Ponzi and regular financial dealings is merely one of degree. When financial institutions commonly carry debt twenty-fives greater than their cash assets the possibility of a failure of redemption teeters on a razor’s edge. The only difference between a Madoff and an AIG rests on the government’s willingness to re-capitalize AIG for another round of financial fantasy football. With a generous injection of capital, Madoff and the other Ponzi-artists could still keep up the ruse, at least as well as Citigroup or Bank of America.

It is time to stop the bleeding. Rescuing the monopoly banks is not rescuing the economy. Nor does it move us any closer to rescuing the millions of working people facing misery and desperation. Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz recognizes this fact when he recently, and belatedly, advocates that “the government take… over those banks that cannot assemble enough capital through private sources to survive without government assistance” (“How to Rescue the Bank Bailout” www.cnn.com). Unfortunately, Stiglitz’s call for nationalization is far too timid – he would privatize these banks when the financial sector stabilizes. He offers no reason to privatize other than his blind faith in markets. Nor could he do so. Returning the banks to private ownership is like giving a weapon back to a murderer.

Stiglitz’s slavish dedication to private ownership also blinds him to the opportunity and necessity of preemptively nationalizing the entire monopoly financial sector, including the insurance and mortgage giants. Their nationalization would stabilize the smaller regional and local financial institutions that are constantly endangered by unfair competition and the threat of absorption by the giants. Roosevelt passed on this opportunity in the New Deal era, hastening the monopolization of the financial sector that we have inherited. The opportunity should not be lost again.

Very soon we will face the mortal decline of the auto industry, an industry experiencing dramatic drops in sales and exploding unsold inventories. As with the financial sector, we will be asked to mount a further rescue, engaging billions more of public funds on top of the billions already granted. Hopefully, Stiglitz and other influential thinkers will urge the nationalization option over further bail-outs for monopoly capital. Until we popularize the idea of public ownership, we are engaged in a class war with only one side fighting.

The Obama victory has brought a break with the relentlessly reactionary policies of the Bush administration. But on the economic front, his advisors show little stomach for policies that will directly benefit those victimized by capitalist folly. Instead, they continue to foster the discredited view that the people’s fate is inseparably linked with the survival of the “masters of the universe”.

Zoltan Zigedy

Let Obama be Obama?

Disenchantment is setting in... Among those who describe themselves as "progressives" (an umbrella-term re-invented to avoid the pejoration of "liberal" and to encompass liberals and the non-Marxist left), the infatuation with President-elect Obama has began to sour. As thousands prepared to join the inaugural celebrations in DC, the announcement that Reverend Rick Warren would invoke the ceremonies sparked a decided outcry from progressive Obama supporters. The right-centrist Cabinet appointments - earlier indications of Obama's governing posture - were largely sloughed off by left supporters as Lincoln-esque maneuvers or practical accommodations. But honoring Warren stretched the credulity of even the most smitten. While Warren has shown a tad more tolerance and compassion than the worst of the evangelical right, he is still a member-in-good-standing of the cabal of fire and brimstone reactionaries.

Who is Obama?

Has Obama betrayed his progressive promise? Obama never made a progressive promise. The idea of Obama as a water-bearer for liberal or progressive reform came not from Obama's mouth, but from the sheer wishes and dreams of the left. They took the vacuity of the "change" slogan as something more than the usual hyperbole of two-party politics despite the fact that it is hurled at every lame duck or incumbent. They saw rhetorical, fuzzy commitments to constituents of the Democratic Party base as more than they have been in every previous Democratic campaign. They took youth, energy, and elequence as a mark of liberalism in a way not seen since the JFK campaign. In short, Obama ran a predictable, well executed Democratic Party Presidential campaign and the left took it to be a people's crusade.

The "democratic" component of the campaign - the internet engagement - was seen as a departure from business-as-usual even though it was used effectively by Howard Dean four years earlier and spawned no new, progressive movement. It is not yet clear how the post-election internet pollings will differ from the numerous Democratic Party postal fund-raising appeals that I receive, masquerading as polls. Republican strategists are now planning a similar "grass roots" strategy for coming elections. The mass mobilizations may well have surpassed previous ones, though, as in past campaigns, the organizers asked for no programmatic commitments or concessions. The efforts were gratefully received as "gifts" and not leverage.

Obama has effectively postured as his political career demanded. His social agency beginnings in Chicago coincided with the mayoral incumbency of an authentic progressive and reformer, Harold Washington. Yet there were no strong ties to either Washington's program nor his legacy.

Obama took liberal positions while dependent in his political advancement upon the liberal Hyde Park constituency and, at the same time, courted moneyed interests in Chicago - interests that would boost his advancement even more. His subsequent career generally followed these lines, balancing policy positions with constituency and fund-sourcing. In this regard, Obama's career parallels that of other centrist Democrats, no better or worse. But certainly nothing in Obama's career would warrant counting him among the Democratic Party's more progressive leaders, for example, Dennis Kucinich or John Conyers.

In fairness, Obama has betrayed no one. His vast centrist following and the Democratic Party old-guard have shown no fear of Obama's perceived "progressive" agenda, an agenda that appears to be more and more in the minds of a self-deluding left. Obama's appointments and positions have produced no panic among big capital which showered an unprecedented amount of financial support onto his campaign.

Fifty-six years ago, Walter Lippmann, an astute political observer, made similar observations about a Democratic Party nominee named "Franklin Roosevelt". As cited in Frederick Lewis Allen's Since Yesterday:

Walter Lippmann warned those Western Democrats who regarded Roosevelt as a courageous progressive and an "enemy of evil influences" that they did not know their man.

"Franklin D. Roosevelt" wrote Lippmann, "is an amiable man with many philanthropic impulses, but he is not the dangerous enemy of anything. He is too eager to please.... Franklin D. Roosevelt is no crusader. He is no tribune of the people. He is no enemy of entrenched privilege. He is a pleasant man who, without any important qualifications for the office, would very much like to be President".

Lippmann's assessment of Roosevelt before his election loosely fits our President-elect. Of course Roosevelt went on to be celebrated as the father of the New Deal and the symbol of the US welfare-state, such as it was. But as every careful read of the Great Depression history shows, the New Deal reforms were the result of independent mass pressure enabling and forcing these changes (see my The Real Lesson of the New Deal for the US Left, http://mltoday.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=328&Itemid=57).

The Left: Immature or Irrelevant?

By fitting Obama with the mantle of progressive change, the leadership of the broad left - much of the peace movement, liberals, environmental social justice activists, etc. - surrendered their critical judgment, independence, and influence to a blind trust in a fictitious movement for change. In the history of social change in the US, every real advance was spurred by independent organization and struggle unhampered by the niceties of bourgeois politics. From the Abolutionist movement to the Civil Rights movement, from the Populist movement to the Great Society, from the Anti-imperialist League to the Anti-Vietnam War movement, the initiative for change sprung from committed, independent activists who defied the caution and inertia of elected officials. Why have these lessons been ignored?

The many open letters to Obama circulating on the left, the often cogent economic game plans, and the internet support groups are no substitute for organized action. Sadly, the left - for I suppose tactical reasons - never rallied behind Obama's progressive pastor, Reverend Wright, when he was dumped and denounced, though many now feel an outrage for his choice of Reverend Warren. Both actions were dictated by opportunity and not principle.

Again, President-elect Obama has betrayed no one. He is who he says he is, in spite of any illusion conjured by left wing forces that chose to forgo the hard work of organizing independent action for fawning after bourgeois politicians. Some wise voices on the left remind us that we must now pressure Obama in order to move him forward towards progressive goals. Indeed, that is so. But that would be true regardless of who won the election.

Even more than the scolding of left wing critics, even more than the corporate connections and lame cabinet appointees, and even more than his offensive inaugural choice, Obama's silence and deferral to the Bush administration in the face of the outrageous massacre of Palestinians demonstrates where he stands. In turning his back on this slaughter of civilians, he is no better nor worse than the vast majority of two-party politicians that encourage Israeli aggression and disdain for Arab lives. There should be no doubt that Israel launched this atrocity, at least in part, to test the compliance of the President-elect. He has passed with flying colors.

Zoltan Zigedy
zoltan.zigedy@gmail.com

Brasscheck Exposes the Feds

On December 16, Brasscheck, the daily video release addressing generally progressive issues, joined the chorus heaping condemnation upon Illinois' Governor Blagojevich. Like most casual observers, Brasscheck followed the herd by referring to the non-existent "indictment" assumed after the Governor's dramatic early morning arrest and media-titillating perp walk.

To Brasscheck's credit, it had second thoughts on December 17, noting the not-to-subtle coincidence of Governor B's arrest and his support for Illinois workers - a point made on this blog on December 10. Brasscheck said:

Yesterday, we had some fun at the
Governor of Illinois' expense.

Maybe he deserves it.

On the other hand, there is something
very odd about the timing of his arrest.

The FBI, those paragons of law enforcement
virtue, seem to be operating more as
political enforcers than anything else.

See what the Governor was doing the
day before he was arrested...

Details:

http://www.brasschecktv.com/page/501.html

- Brasscheck

And on December 18, Brasscheck came back with another video on the Republic victory noting how quickly l'affaire Blagojevich pushed the labor action off the front pages:

When was the last time you heard good news
about a labor action in the United States?

Have you *ever* heard good news about a
labor action in the US?

There may be a reason for that.

Details:

http://www.brasschecktv.com/page/503.html

- Brasscheck

Kudos to Brasscheck for throwing more fuel on the fire of suspicion around the political motives of Fitzgerald's hasty arrest of the Illinois Governor.

Of course the issue is not Governor B's innocence; it would be shocking if he didn't participate in the pervasive process of "pay for play". As a noted defense attorney commented, it is customary for ambassadorships, UN appointments, and other government appointments to flow from campaign contributions and other financial commitments; influence-peddling is the lifeblood of bourgeois politics. Call it cynical, but it is surely naive to feign shock at the horse-trading that characterizes the crassness produced by two-party domination.

At issue here, though, is the blatant, high level abuse of judicial action to influence public sentiment and shape public policy. With Brasscheck, I question the timing of the dramatic arrest that tarnished Governor B's prior defense of Illinois workers and drove the story of militant action to the back pages, diminishing the chances of any "copycat" actions.

Later revelations show that Fitzgerald had even bigger fish to fry. Obama's associates, SEIU, and the labor movement in general are now all drawing scrutiny based upon implied association. The weekend Wall Street Journal reveals that an anti-union group, Center for Union Facts, plans to mount a media campaign against the Employee Free Choice Act based upon drawing links between SEIU and Blagojevich.

Those who fail to oppose this judicial thuggery should be reminded of the Federal campaign against Teamster President Ron Carey who died last week. On the heels of his victory against corruption and his leadership of an historic UPS strike, Carey was driven from the union leadership by a long, tedious judicial mugging that forced him from the union leadership and set back the cause of class struggle unionism. Then, like now, few had the stomach for a principled fight for judicial fairness in the face of public humiliation.

zoltanzigedy@gmail.com

Even More on Governor B and the Feds

While the media has pounced on Governor B's alleged sins and Democrats are scrambling in every direction to dissociate and condemn the Governor, a few judicial experts, with no horses in this race, have spoken out on improprieties in the actions of the Feds.

Writing in The New York Times, Barry Coburn, a former Federal prosecutor, opines:

Against this backdrop, it is hard to feel comfortable with Mr. Fitzgerald's [the Federal prosecutor's] remarks in announcing the charges that Mr Blagojevich's conduct amounted to a "political corruption crime spree" and "would make Lincoln roll over in his grave," that "the breadth of corruption laid out in these charges is staggering." that Mr. Blagojevich "put a "for sale" sign on the naming of a United States Senator" and that his conduct was "cynical" and "appalling" and has "taken us to a truly new low."

Any prosecutor at the center of a firestorm of publicity may find the temptation to grandstand hard to resist, but these comments are, to put it mildly, remarkably inflammatory. Mr. Fitzgerald's expression of revulsion, use of hyperbolic rhetoric and implicit assertion of his personal belief that the charges have merit clearly run a foul of the rules. It is one thing for a prosecutor to publicly condemn a defendant's actions and assert a belief that he did what he is charged with doing after a trial and conviction, but another to do so before he is indicted by a grand jury.

In "The Prosecution Should Give It a Rest" (12-13-08), Coburn cites the relevant rules of both the US District Court for Northern Illinois and the American Bar Association pertaining to Fitzgerald's actions. Though stated in cautious legalese, it is clear that the prosecutor is in flagrant violation of these rules.

On the same day, Victoria Toensing, a former Justice Department official - and a self-described Republican - wrote of Fitzgerald in The Wall Street Journal ("Fitzgerald Should Keep His Opinions to Himself" 12-13-08). Repeating much of the Coburn charges against Fitzgerald, Toensing adds "And although I am a Republican, I am first an officer of the court. Thus, I take no joy in a prosecutor pursuing a Democratic politician by violating his ethical responsibility. I fear for the integrity of the criminal justice system when a prosecutor breaks the rules."

She goes further by making a connection to Fitzgerald's prior behavior in the Plame case:

In his news conference in October 2005 announcing the indictment of Scooter Libby for obstruction of justice, he compared himself to an umpire who "gets sand thrown in his eyes." The umpire is trying to figure what happened and somebody blocked" his view. With this statement, Mr. Fitzgerald made us all believe he could not find the person who leaked Valerie Plame's name as a CIA operative because of Mr. Libby. What we now know is that Mr. Fitzgerald knew well before he ever started the investigation in January 2004 that Richard Armitage was the leaker and nothing Mr. Libby did or did not do threw sand in his eyes. In fact - since there was no crime - there was not even a game for the umpire to call.

Clearly, Toensing is suggesting that Libby was unjustly convicted in the Plame case and Fitzgerald knew that the conviction was not appropriate to the charge. But what she doesn't say is that Libby was the designated fall guy in the case in the time-honored tradition of two-party politics. Libby fell on his sword - without a great deal of pain as things turned out - in order to protect others. The long, costly investigation diverted attention from the real connections that would have linked Cheney, Rove, and, probably, Bush to the illegal outing of Plame. This could not have been done without the collusion of Fitzgerald and a lapdog media. We know from the Nixon Watergate scandal, where layer after layer of fall guys were peeled away before Nixon's role was revealed, that this is a common practice with bourgeois politics. But the media "watchdogs" have short memories.

It should be abundantly clear that Fitzgerald is a political operative, willing to serve his political allies even at the expense of the appearance of judicial propriety. His career since his appointment to the Northern Illinois position has been one of immediate and persistent legal investigations of Democratic elected officials in line with the directives of the Bush Justice Department that are now well documented. Nonetheless, he has been emboldened by the lack of resistance from either a vigilant media or a combative Democratic Party.

There should be no doubt that this is more than a move against Governor B. In reality, its a shot across the bow of President-elect Obama and his administration, signaling a willingness on the part of the rabid-Right to insure that Obama's heralded bi-partisanship will be decidedly one-sided. Because of Democratic Party spinelessness in this affair, they have likely already conceded the vacant Illinois Senate seat to the Republicans. It seems unfathomable that Governor B has been pilloried by his Party and the media before a hysterical prosecutor has called a Grand Jury or achieved an indictment.

FOR THE UNVARNISHED TRUTH ABOUT THE DEVELOPMENTS IN GREECE, GO TO: http://inter.kke.gr/News/2008news/2008-information/.
zoltanzigedy@gmail.com

More on Governor B and the Feds

Folks love a good scandal. Politicians caught with their hands in the cookie jar or with their flies open satisfies a deep and too rarely fulfilled need to prick the huge balloon of bourgeois hypocrisy.

But behind every public exposure is a political back story of intrigue, connivance and opportunism. Only a freshman journalism student still believes that good stories are simply mined from the everyday labors of hard working reporters or picked like ripe plums from the myriad events of the day. Stories are leaked, provoked, manipulated, and choreographed. In an age where the line between news and entertainment is blurred, at a time when careerism, self-interest, and political advantage motivates, this is especially true. If you're a Marxist, this calls for the M-L scalpel to cut away appearances and expose the underlying forces at play. And if you're a movie buff, you may prefer the imagery of a gullible Kansas girl pulling back the curtain to reveal the manipulative Wizard of Oz (with lyrics by the blacklisted Red, Yip Harburg). However you take your dose of political skepticism, there's always more to the story than meets the eye.

The saga of Governor B continues to unfold with more and more interesting wrinkles. Wednesday's Wall Street Journal screams in headlines of a possible link between Governor B and Jesse Jackson, Jr. In lower case type, the Journal alleges a tie to The Service Employees (SEIU). The glee in which these claims are stated is barely contained. Innuendo about a connection with President elect Obama drips from the columns. Clearly, a political campaign is emerging, directed by the Bush appointed US attorney general, Patrick Fitzgerald. Fitzgerald was, of course, the special prosecutor charged to investigate and prosecute in the infamous "Plame" affair involving the outing of a CIA agent deemed hostile to the Bush administration. After five years of slow-moving, cautious, and enormously costly investigation, Fitzgerald convicted a Cheney aide, "Scooter" Libby and closed the case despite strong public evidence of Rove and Cheney involvement. No journalistic hatchet men were charged and Libby walked after a Bush pardon with a laughable fine and probation.

Compare this with the early morning raid and Governor's B's perp walk in handcuffs: No grand jury, no judicial process, no caution, just a dramatic arrest guaranteed to draw media fervor (and take attention away from the Governor's prior act of solidarity with Republic workers). Clearly, Fitzgerald has more enthusiasm for this case than he showed in the Plame matter.

Buried in the Wednesday Journal article is the revelation that many defense attorneys who read the 76 page FBI document "noted many of Gov. Blagojevich's headline-grabbing conversations weren't necessarily crimes". Prominent attorney Gerald Lefcourt affirmed this, adding "Every politician keeps accounts - what is horse trading, and what is hyperbole?"

The Thursday Journal adds even more detail to what is shaping up to be even more clearly a case of politically motivated judicial head-hunting. In an article about convicted Chicago developer and fundraiser Antoin Rezko, the authors point out that Rezko had written to the judge in his case complaining that Fitzgerald was pressuring "him to tell them the 'wrong' things I supposedly know about Governor Blagojevich and Senator Obama". After more arm-twisting and a possible plea bargain, Rezko has now agreed to cooperate with Fitzgerald's office, serving as one of the principal sources supporting the charges against Governor B. Politically motivated? For sure.

Is there any doubt that "facts" will appear that will send the talk radio and cable snakes into a frenzied attack upon Obama?

The broken two-party system, where public office is essentially bought and sold, creates this cesspool of corruption, judicial manipulation, and political opportunism. To run for any office beyond dog catcher, sums of money are necessary - well beyond the resources of any but the very rich. It becomes virtually impossible to raise such sums without establishing relationships with contributors, relationships based upon favors - what has come to be called "pay for play". It is naive to think that this behavior is an aberration. At best, politicians are either shrewd, by distancing themselves from any incriminating transactions, or less reckless than others.

In this context, nearly all financial exposure is foolhardy or politically motivated. And in the case of Governor B, likely both are true. The financial difficulties of fighting the Feds through nearly all of his tenure as well as Fitzgerald's hit-man mission left him vulnerable to the charges that are emerging. The timing of the arrest may well have been made to overshadow the Republic factory occupation, but the ultimate goal is to embarrass and tarnish the Obama administration. But, then, that's bourgeois politics.

zoltanzigedy@gmail.com